NLP for better relationships

One of the most important aspects you will find out about on an NLP Practitioner training is that EVERYBODY lives in their own MODEL OF THE WORLD. This is a kind of psycho-cultural jargon that really needs to be explained and exemplified. a key stone in sponsoring better and improved relationships and all the fruits this can offer.

Specifically the improved relationships you want with your children, your partner and you peers and possibly even yourself.

I have recently worked with a very bright and transforming young person who is very much in the process of orientating and integrating their own ideas, beliefs and rationalisation in the mist of a very messy divorce between their parents.

I think very sadly, as reported, said person, is receiving contradictory messages, matter of facts and damming accounts that are funnelled in a kind or Either Or way.

No child should be required to endure this kind of push me, pull you in this context. Thing is they are, so, how can this be transformed into something much more constructive and generative?

To take a step back,briefly, before going forward, another way to attempt to get this idea across was made very famous by Lord Alfred Korzybski in his works related to language and how it conveys, or tries to, relate language to experience and the meanings people make from experience. OK here we are again. What Alfy said was “The Map Is Not The Territory.” And everybody has their own individual and to some very large extent culturally shared maps.

Our Culture – Our Rules – Your Indoctrination

A very recent BBC ‘news’ item delivering information about the current situation in Syria came to mind.

This can be interpreted or made sense of like this. Our words, our memories our beliefs and internal mental maps, cultural and individual, that are quite literally constructed or made up so that we can in some way make sense of our experience in our immediate environment.

I have done my best, in metaphor and direct examples, to sponsor the idea that all people have their own motivations, their own beliefs and that both, for that person is valid and their reality. I have also explored Syria in context with Northern Ireland and how children can be indoctrinated to an either / or culture. They were already ahead of the game because they were already using the clause ‘yes but in some situations …’

Our brains or more accurately our whole nervous system is geared up to abstract or assimilate the cultural norms of our society. It is very easy to look upon what is happening in Syria with disdain or contempt for a pretty disgusting use of sentient beings by sentient beings. But, look into the past ( less than 100 years ) of the racial hatred between factions of people in Northern Ireland.

One persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter and both while probably having similar ethnocentric values and beliefs have radically different values and beliefs when projected on warring factions.

Managing Emotions And Exploring Your Values

Jean Piaget, a famous developmental psychologists research states people mature through four stages of emotional, cultural and necessarily behavioural development. These are known as Sensory Motor ( 0-2 ), Pre Operational ( 2-7), Concrete Operational ( 7-11 ) and Formal Operational ( 11 to adult ). What this means is through a natural series of normal evolutions we all go from ego centric to ethno centric to free thinking adults.

At the stage of Concrete Operational, young children learn that their view or perspective is not the only one. This stage involves taking on the perspectives of other people. At the Formal operational level, young adults begin to be able to think about thinking and it is at this stage, become aware that they can introspect about cultural, familial and ethnocentric beliefs.

Having discovered that one perspective will not and can not fit all, we are able to take another’s perspective. We are in the privileged position to be able to, through imagination, knowledge of culture and identification of other peoples values and beliefs ( which as as concrete or flimsy as our own ) to momentarily play at being someone else; taking on their beliefs,values, concerns and righteous ( as ours ) behaviour. By being many-perspectival we can do compassion. This does NOT mean all views or perspectives are equal, it means we can more better appreciate and respect where someone, anyone is coming from.

This very deep and very human understanding, or compassion, can be sponsored with a variety of NLP techniques such as ‘Perceptual Positions, Dilts’ Meta Mirror, Metaphors or stories that create the vicarious experiences of often very deep and realisations that help us grow as generatively as human beings.

Managing and Preserving Relationships

This requires a next step which is both less and more easy. This is about discovering the purpose or intention that drove another person ( or you ) to act in a certain way. Perhaps a topic for another post. Simple to sya this is ALL about understanding that motivations and drives are expressed in various forms. When the forms don’t seemingly match we are into the space of negotiation. Thank you for reading.

NLP Training in Newcastle

Three NLP Training courses are available during the year. January to June is 18 days, April is 9 days over three modules and one later in the year. NLP Practitioner training is a prerequisite to Clinical Hypnothrapy Training in August. All NLP courses in Newcastle are the same price.